Richard Smalley's
Energy Vision was The Distributed Storage-Generation Grid. He saw our energy system evolving to the
point where energy is transported as electricity over wires rather than
physical transportation of coal, oil, etc. This Distributed Energy Grid
allows for multiple energy inputs like massive solar or wind farms down to
local energy generation through solar cells on rooftops.

Energy
transportation over long distances via copper wire is not possible. Too
much energy is lost to thermal thermal expansion. Professor Smalley's
answer was to replace all the copper wiring with wires made of armchair carbon nanotubes, the Armchair Quantum Wire (AQW).